On Thu, 4 Feb 1999, Michael Sondow wrote:
> Esther Dyson a �crit:
> >
> > Jim, any comments on http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/17678.htm
>
> Here's a passage from the news item:
>
> "Free speech organizations say that the report
> points to a lack of accountability in the
> self-regulatory industry. Organizations such as
> the ISPA are accountable only to their
> members, work to their own guidelines and
> policies, and have resisted calls for increased
> public accountability."
>
> Sounds about right. This is why people and groups from the public sector
> receive nothing but prejudice and slander on this and other lists, and why
> the leaders of ISP associations try to co-opt the voice of the public by
> pretending to represent the end-users.
The people pretending to represent the end users in this case are
two law students calling themselves "Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties".
To the best of my knowledge CR-CL has no other members. I would guess
that if pressed they would get a few friends to sign up.
With the usual casual abandon, CR-CL claims to represent the millions
of end users in the UK because, uh, well, they feel like it. They
would like to head an organisation of millions. Since no one
volunteered to be headed, they just declared themselves the spokesmen
for the UK's end users.
ISPA UK first heard of these people when they demanded that we tell
our ISP members that they had to email CR-CL literature to all of their
customers. I know what most of our members would tell the ISPA board
if we tried to impose such a requirement. With my VBCnet hat on, I know
what I would tell ISPA: we don't spam our customers or demand that they
spam theirs.
So ISPA declined the opportunity and CR-CL went off to dream up other
schemes.
> It's obvious that ISPs DO NOT represent the best interests of the end-users,
In fact END USERS represent the best interests of end users.
This may be hard for you to appreciate, the users of the Internet are as
a group intelligent and knowledgeable. Any ISP can tell you that end
users as a group express themselves loudly and forcefully whenever things
are't as they like. We listen to them every day.
The larger UK dialup ISPs have on the order of 100 support staff handling
thousands of support calls each day. How many end users did you listen
to yesterday, Michael?
--
Jim Dixon Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316
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Member of Council Telecommunications Director
Internet Services Providers Association EuroISPA EEIG
http://www.ispa.org.uk http://www.euroispa.org
tel +44 171 976 0679 tel +32 2 503 22 65
